An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center

This collection of poet, peace activist, and co-founder of the
Beat movement Allen Ginsberg contains a handful of his works, including
Empty Mirror and a theatrical adaptation
of
Kaddish, correspondence with Peter
Orlovsky, Jack Kerouac, and others, and notebooks by and letters to Peter
Orlovsky, Ginsberg's long-time companion.

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas at Austin

Allen Ginsberg, American poet and one of the founders of the Beat
movement, was born in 1926, the second son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg. His
father was an English teacher, a poet, and a socialist; his mother was a
communist and an active member in the Party; both were children of
Russian-Jewish immigrants. Naomi also suffered from paranoid delusions and
Ginsberg often stayed home from school to take care of her during her
depressions. She entered several institutions for varying lengths of time and
eventually had to be permanently committed. The experience of watching the
decline of his mother's mental health made Ginsberg very sensitive to and
uniquely qualified to deal throughout his life with people of varying mental
states.

A good student despite his difficulties at home, Ginsberg entered
Columbia in 1943 as a pre-law student, but with a strong interest in poetry. He
contributed frequently to various student publications. He was expelled for one
year in 1945 after he scrawled obscene phrases in the dust on his dorm window
and was subsequently found in bed with Jack Kerouac. The issue of homosexuality
was not brought up at his disciplinary hearing with the Dean, rather he was
fined for having an unregistered overnight guest and for the obscenities, and
expelled for one year in the hope that he might mature enough to continue his
education.

Ginsberg promptly moved in with William Burroughs, who became his
mentor, exposing him to readings far outside the narrow scope of Columbia's
conservative literature department. While living with Burroughs, Ginsberg was
also immersed in the New York underground drug, crime, and sex scene and became
friends with Lucian Carr, Neal Cassady, and John Holmes, among others, as well
as Kerouac who was also studying with Burroughs. Ginsberg returned to Columbia
but continued his experimentation with drugs and writing forms. In 1947,
Ginsberg dropped out of Columbia and took a merchant ship to Africa and back.
Returning to East Harlem, Ginsberg suffered a sort of break-down and
experienced a vision which gave him a glimpse of creative realms outside the
norms of the material world. He and Kerouac, who had also had a conversion
experience that year, turned to Buddhism and other Eastern influences, turning
their backs on Western religion and the status quo.

In 1949 Ginsberg moved out of East Harlem and into downtown Manhattan
where Herbert Huncke and several of his friends began storing stolen goods. The
police raided the apartment and Ginsberg served eight months in the New York
Psychiatric Hospital where he met Carl Solomon who offered further challenges
to his convictions about poetry. Ginsberg continued to write the collection of
poems later published in 1972 as
The Gates of Wrath.

Through the 1950s Ginsberg traveled through Mexico and Cuba, and
eventually reached California. He began studying Zen and other eastern
philosophies and in 1956 he gave his first public poetry reading, performing
Howl to a stunned audience. At the age of
29, Allen Ginsberg had produced a work of poetry that would speak to an entire
generation.

Ginsberg traveled to Europe and Tangiers in the late fifties with his
lover Peter Orlovsky and settled back in New York in 1959. He traveled to Peru
in 1960 and in 1961 began a trip which lasted six years and took him through
India, Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia including Vietnam. While visiting Gary
Snyder in Japan, Ginsberg had another personal revelation, this one showing him
that the way to alternative realms was not found by going outside of himself
via mind altering drugs, but rather by looking inside himself through the use
of meditation. The stories of his travels and of "the
Change" were published in
Planet News (1968).

From 1970 onward, Ginsberg's fame grew. He traveled around the country
participating in peace rallies and sit-ins, and published widely. As his
writing began to make money he set up a non-profit organization and donated the
money to destitute writers, independent newspapers, and the legal defense of
arrested peace protesters. He purchased a farm in upstate New York which he and
various friends made relatively self-sufficient. He contributed lyrics to and
performed with the punk rock band the Clash, performed with Bob Dylan's Rolling
Thunder Tour, and jammed with John Lennon. He continued to teach, speak, write,
and perform into the nineties. He died of liver cancer in 1997.

Correspondence and a theatrical adaptation of Ginsberg's poem
Kaddish make up the bulk of the Allen
Ginsberg Collection, 1944-1979, supplemented by holograph and typescript works
by Ginsberg, journal and notebook entries by Peter Orlovsky, and critical works
about Ginsberg by other authors. The collection is organized into four series,
arranged alphabetically by author and chronologically where possible: Series I.
Works, 1951-1970 (.5 box); Series II. Correspondence, 1944-1979 (.5 box);
Series III. Peter Orlovsky's Personal Papers, 1961-1964 (1 box); and Series IV.
Third-Party Works and Correspondence, 1954-1968 (1 box). This collection was
previously accessible through a card catalog, but has been recataloged as part
of a retrospective conversion project.

The Works Series contains several poems by Ginsberg including
"The Green Automobile" and
"Primrose Hill Guru," as well as a statement
to the Senate subcommittee investigating the use of LSD. Additionally, two
revised typescripts and galley proofs for
Empty Mirror are present. A complete list of
Ginsberg's works in this collection is provided in the Index of Works at the
end of this guide.

The Correspondence Series is divided into two sections, outgoing and
incoming. The outgoing section contains a great many letters from Ginsberg to
fellow Beat writer Jack Kerouac and Ginsberg's long-time companion Peter
Orlovsky, in addition to other friends and writers. The incoming correspondence
includes a few letters from consular officials as well as friends and admirers.
Individual correspondents are listed in the Index of Correspondents at the end
of this guide.

The Peter Orlovsky Series is composed of various bills, calling cards,
notes, drafts and other fragments of Orlovsky's professional efforts. Several
pages of journal entries are present in addition to an address book. People
writing to Orlovsky include publishers, friends, and family. Due to their
fragility, the journal pages are only available to researchers in photocopy
form. Individual correspondents are listed in the Index of Correspondents.

The Third-party Works and Correspondents Series contains several
critical works about Ginsberg's poetry, a few unidentified poems, and multiple
drafts of Jerome Benjamin's efforts to adapts Ginsberg's long poem
Kaddish for the theatre. There is a small
amount of correspondence between friends of Ginsberg and Orlovsky, generally
about one or the other of the two. Individual authors and their works are
listed in the Index of Works by other Authors and individual correspondents are
listed in the Index of Correspondents at the end of this guide.

Located elsewhere in the Ransom Center are five Vertical Files
containing newspaper clippings with biographical information, literary
criticism, and published works by Ginsberg in addition to 32 photographs of
Ginsberg, his family, and friends located in the Literary Files of the
Photography Collection. Also present are 12 cassette tapes of Ginsberg reading
his poetry, and Ginsberg material is located on side B of Gerard Malanga
reel-to-reel tape #19.

Other materials associated with Allen Ginsberg may be found in the
following collections at the Ransom Center: